Summary Writing – Brief Outline

Definition of a Summary

A summary is a short statement that gives the main information about something, without giving all the details. A summary condenses the main points of a given text, preserving in a more concise form its original focus, its most important ideas, and its major emphases, while greatly reducing (or leaving out altogether) its minor details.

Writing an academic summary requires careful analysis of the structure and meaning of the original text: you must accurately identify its topic, the significant points it makes about that topic, and its less important features, and on that basis decide how best to condense the material.

Note that a summary must be written in your own words. Just combining selected quotations from the original text won’t work because it will inevitably mean leaving out too much.

An effective summary is a condensed rewrite of the original text reflecting the depth of your understanding of the original.

Goals of writing a summary

The goal of writing a summary of an article, a chapter, or a book is to offer as accurately as possible the full sense of the original, but in a more condensed form.

A summary restates the author’s main point, purpose, intent, and supporting details in your own words.

The process of summarizing enables you to better grasp the original, and the result shows the reader that you understand it as well. In addition, the knowledge gained allows you to better analyze and critique (to say how good or bad a book, a play, a painting, or a set of ideas is) the original.

Characteristics of an academic summary

1. Summaries clearly identify the author and source of the material, preferably in the first sentence.

2. Summaries demonstrate your understanding of a text’s subject matter.

3. Summaries are shorter than the original text (from 20% to 80% of the original, depending on its length) – they omit the original text’s examples, asides (a remark or story that is not part of the main subject of a speech), analogies, and rhetorical strategies.

4. Summaries differ from paraphrases (a statement that expresses in a shorter, clearer, or different way what someone has said or written) which more closely follow the original text; they still use the summary writer’s words, but they are longer than summaries.

5. Summaries focus exclusively on the presentation of the original text writer’s main ideas – they do not include the summary writer’s interpretations or opinions.

6. Summaries begin with the author’s main idea and contain only the key supporting details.

7. Summaries normally are written in your own words – they do not contain extended quotes or paraphrases. The summary quotes directly from the work only if absolutely necessary.

8. To show that the summary writer relates the original text writer’s points of view, summaries use standard signal phrases like, for example, “According to the author...”; “The author believes...” etc.

9. Longer summaries periodically indicate that they are still the material of another author by inserting phrases like “He goes on to point out...” “The article also maintains that…” etc.

10. Summaries preserve, as much as possible, the order, balance and proportion, and emphasis of the original work. Though, in order to preserve the author’s emphasis, you may occasionally have to change his/her order.

Part 2: 7 Steps to Write a Summary

Step 1	Reading the original text	Step 5	Revising a summary
Step 2	Underlying with summarizing in mind	Step 6	Rewriting a summary
Step 3	Organizing a summary	Step 7	Editing a summary
Step 4	Writing a summary

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14